Congress rejects BJP charge on N-deal

The Congress rejects the BJP's charge that the UPA Govt is compromising the country's interest, reports HT Correspondent.

The Congress rejected the BJP's charge that the UPA government was compromising the country's interest by lobbying for the Indo-US nuclear deal.

"There is as much fact in former foreign affairs minister Jaswant Singh's allegations in this regard as there was to his earlier allegation (of a PMO mole leaking the country's nuclear secret," spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said.

He ridiculed the BJP leader's charge that the Manmohan Singh government was lobbying for the deal with a counter poser. "What was he doing when he was lobbying, tangoing or working in tandem with Strobe Talbott?" he quipped, pointing out that the India has a strong case and needs to put it across forcefully with the US insofar as the deal was concerned.

Singhvi demanded that the report be made public which established that 20 of 21 skeletons found were the victims of the Gujarat riots.

Ridiculing the BJP latest mantra of making icons out of convicts and those who violated human rights, he said that the main opposition's decision to use Navjot Singh Sidhu as a star campaigner in Punjab only showed that the party practiced immorality while preaching morality. Gujarat was a "sad, sorry and sordid" story of evidence of human rights violation being suppressed.

Singhvi also accused the BJP of hypocrisy by disrupting Parliament on the question of Uttaranchal as Uttarakhand, especially as its own members were party to the resolution adopted by the Assembly to rename the state.